Sundays were the worst for Charlie Webster growing up. With her mum out at work at a nearby supermarket she was left alone with her abusive stepfather.
Hoarding chocolate and crisps that she’d brought with her paper round wages, Charlie, then 10, would hide silently in her room, trying desperately not to attract his attention.
‘Sundays were my dread days. I would listen out for the car or the door, because he might have gone out for half an hour, and I could use the loo.
‘Sometimes he would make me come out, because he might want to taunt me. He would make me sit there and throw things at me, punch me or give me a Chinese burn,’ the broadcaster and campaigner tells Metro over Zoom from her home in London.
Growing up in Sheffield, Charlie, now 43, learned how to move around the house in near silence, avoiding creaking steps and holding her breath so he wouldn’t register her.
‘I tried to make myself as small and as silent as possible, to the point where I struggled to go to the toilet because of the noise of flushing or shutting the door. I would wet myself, sometimes, rather than going out of my bedroom,’ she recalls.
‘I remember thinking – surely life shouldn’t be like this. I was so unhappy and it was hard seeing my mum so deeply upset all the time.’
From the time Charlie’s stepdad arrived on the scene at the age of seven, she lived in fear and hyper vigilance, constantly afraid of the violence lashed out at her or her mum, Joy, and later her brothers eight, 10 and 16 years her junior.
‘Every day there was a fear that, would we still be alive? Every morning I would wake and think – Is my mum dead – because I’d hear stuff in the night.’
The violence was brutal; punching, kicking and on one occasion in a drunken rage in a holiday apartment he pushed Charlie to the ground and ‘frothing at the mouth’ attacked her so violently a passerby charged in and pulled him off.
This Is Not Right
On November 25, 2024 Metro launched This Is Not Right, a campaign to address the relentless epidemic of violence against women.
With the help of our partners at Women's Aid, This Is Not Right aims to shine a light on the sheer scale of this national emergency.
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‘He would control food. I would become very good at being able to get a piece of food without him realising because he would count the yoghurts. And I wasn’t allowed to use the shower until everyone else had had theirs to use the hot water.’
He called Charlie ugly, thick and pathetic, and of course the emotional abuse affected her self-worth. ‘I thought, I’m not lovable. I’m not good enough, It’s my fault. I’m a terrible person. I’m why everybody’s unhappy.’
As she reached her teens, Charlie walked a delicate balance between being out of the house as much as possible without giving grounds for her stepdad to punish her.
Running competitively became her escape, training and clubs her sanctuary. She would stay at friends’ houses whenever she could, where she saw how different the dynamic was to her own toxic home.
When she came back, Charlie and Joy were afraid to talk out loud to each other.
‘I would come in after school and then training after having got two buses back and done my homework on the bus. And I would creep in around half nine, and my mum would be there in the kitchen cleaning – that was how she coped.
‘If I spoke to her, within seconds he would come into the kitchen and do something to separate us, or smash something or physically hurt me or mum. It got to the point where me and my mum just wouldn’t speak to each other if we were in the house.’
In a cruel twist of fate, Charlie wasn’t safe out of the home either. When she was 15, she was sexually abused by her coach, which she explored in a BBC documentary in 2021.
‘He used my own vulnerability and trauma against me, because I already had low self-worth and I trusted him,’ she says.
Charlie’s escape finally arrived when she came home from school at 17 to find a ‘Sold’ sign outside her home.
‘I was told by my mum they were moving to Leeds, and he said I wasn’t allowed to go with them. I can’t even begin to tell you how much that broke my heart. My brothers were my life. They were what helped me hang on, because I love them so much and I took care of them.’
With her biological father elsewhere, Charlie moved in with her maternal grandparents while she finished her education. She realises now that it was Joy’s effort to get her to safety, but it was another blow.
‘With my Nan and Grandad I felt even worse. Because even though they were kind, and I was safe, I felt like I was a burden on them and felt totally rejected by my mum, and really scared, because I couldn’t be with my family to try and manage the situation.’
Charlie finished her education – but left running – and ended up deeply depressed yet highly successful in her career.
She funded herself through university, moved to Madrid in her early twenties and travelled all over the world broadcasting, eventually working for the BBC and Sky, covering global events from the Olympic and Paralympic Games and FIFA World Cup and she became an advocate, speaker and campaigner against domestic violence. But still she hadn’t escaped the abuse.
‘It was so contradictory, because I would be on Sky looking great and smiling away, and then I’d drive up north for Christmas and I’d walk into the house and immediately I would feel that same air that I knew as a kid and within seconds I would revert.
‘I owned a property, I was doing well, I had a profile and a voice – and then I’m a child again, sitting in the corner, wrapping presents on the floor and he comes over and kicks me.’
‘I had created a career and independence for myself. Yet all those feelings of low self-worth remained. I went into risky sex and unhealthy behaviour patterns because relationships were very triggering and traumatising.
‘I drank a lot when I was a teen to take the pain away. As I got older, I over-worked and over-exercised.
‘I was hyper vigilant in every room – always aware of where the exit was, sleeping on the side of the bed near the door. I had nightmares and flashbacks.’
1 in 7 children live with domestic abuse
Ellie Daniel, Head of Policy and Survivor Services at Women’s Aid says: ’It is a tragic and sadly, often forgotten reality that this winter, an estimated 1.8 million children will be living with domestic abuse.
‘This is equivalent to 1 in 7 children, although the reality is likely even higher. Despite being recognised as victims in their own right, their experiences and voices are often ignored or siloed. This year, our winter appeal is focused on them – ensuring that when children and their mothers flee abuse, they have a safe space to run to and that they get the support and help they so desperately need.
‘It is only by coming together that we can build a future where every child can be safe, all year, every year.’
Eventually, Joy left her husband in 2018 and tried to rebuild. But even with her ex out of the picture, life was tough. She had been isolated from her own family and friends and was left with “a little bag and £40 that she’d borrowed”, Charlie says.
‘Mum and I have a really strong relationship. She worked on her own trauma and that really helped us both. She carried a lot of guilt and shame but I am really proud of how far she has come.’
Meanwhile, Charlie considers herself happy, healthy and healed now; she is in a new relationship, has won awards for her hit podcasts Scamanda and Unicorn Girl and is now working on TV projects in the US.
She’s also worked with the Government, advising ministers on abuse as part of the Ministry of Justice Victims’ Panel and campaigned on the Domestic Abuse Bill and wider victim legislation to ensure children’s voices are heard, because she desperately wants to help break the cycles of abuse.
‘As a society, we can’t treat the children as secondary in domestic abuse – after the parent. We need to see the child as a victim too. Children need to be at the forefront of policy, legislation and resourcing,’ she explains.
‘This is the reason I tell my story. Not because it’s about me and what’s happened, but because it’s happening elsewhere.
‘I want people to understand that without proper support and mental health care, these children can grow up to be adults who become the next victim or perpetrator in the cycle of abuse.
‘Abusive adults may go on to new relationships and families, but I want people to understand the deep trauma that domestic abuse leaves you with and the profound effects that can have. I’ve done so much work on my trauma and am in a really great place to speak about my own journey of healing to use my story to help others.’
For more information about Women’s Aid’s christmas appeal to support child victims and survivors of abuse, click here.
Charlie Webster is author of Why It’s OK to Talk About Trauma: How to Make Sense of the Past and Grow Through the Pain.
